How Capacity Reached $43M Revenue and 2,000 Clients While Acquiring You Can Book Me (Interview with CEO David Karandish)

Introduction and Guest Background

Nathan Latka

00:01Folks, I am grinning big today because we have a real treat. Over the next twenty five minutes, you're gonna learn the story of that grind, that twelve year bootstrap hustle from 0 to $5,000,000 of revenue competitive space from Bridget Harris, who cut her teeth in politics before launching You Can Book Me about twelve years ago. They're they're about to make a announcement, which I'm not gonna steal the thunder from. They'll do it a second, but she

00:23has now teamed up with David at capacity who's a seasoned entrepreneur, cut his own teeth teeth starting in 2011 at answers.com. One of the, we'll call it one of the fallouts of the 1999 heyday, but went public, went through a pipe, went through a take private, went through a majority, went through a secondary, ended up selling that business for about $809,100,000,000 bucks before launching Capacity, which is now focused on helping entrepreneurs enable and get their support

00:50done quickly, providing great customer support, all leaning in to this AI revolution we're living in. On that note, David, Bridget, are you ready to take us to

David Karandish

00:57>> the top? Let's do it. Let's

Acquisition Announcement: Capacity Buys You Can Book Me

Nathan Latka

00:59do it. Alright. Well, David, first off, what's the announcement? What happened recently?

David Karandish

01:04>> I am really excited to announce that Capacity has acquired You Can Book Me. This brings world class online booking into our, collection of AI powered, platform pieces. And so one of the biggest use cases we've had for capacity is when folks want to automate their booking process. And now, we're able to do that on the tune of a million bookings a month.

Bridget Harris on You Can Book Me Revenue and Why She Sold

Nathan Latka

01:31That's incredible. Now, Bridget, I thought it would never happen. I'm going, there's no way. It's just this is never gonna happen. She's got profit sharing plans set up. You know, she's in full control. She's doing this with family members. This is great. Help us understand sort of, what what right before you guys signed the M and A deal and it closed, what did you grow revenue to, and what ultimately made capacity the right fit for You

01:56Can Book Me?

01:58So we had we've got You Can Book Me running at a really nice $5,000,000 a year, profitable, as you know well. You know, I've spoken a lot about creating profit, which you need to do if you're bootstrapped over long term. You need to start making money to make it worthwhile, frankly. So we've got to that stage. And, really, at the end of the day, I'm looking for how do I get You Can Book Me to the

02:21next level? How do I get this, you know, this business that we have built, which has has got to a point which is really exciting, really something that, you know, means something for our team, our company, but also our customers. How do we get it to the next level? And, actually, there's a combination of reasons why. And and, I should say at this stage, you know, we didn't go through a process. We weren't for sale. We

02:43didn't put some some big estate sign, you know, up in our in our lot. Capacity approached us, and, we like we really liked the offer. We liked we liked the fact that they're in customer support, an AI for customer support. It's a huge problem that needs to be solved. We know it. We feel it inside You Can Book Me. So I knew that, you know, what they, are doing, what they're what they're building for their own

03:07customers is a really strong product offer that we know our customers could really benefit from. There's a huge amount of synergy, as David was saying, that, all of those guys need scheduling, and, we need, you know, we we need to find a vehicle to scale and grow what we do. So there was a lot of synergy there. And I think also that the team itself and the way they approached us, it was really respectful of us

03:32being a bootstrap company, of us having our own, you know, our own engine that we grow through product led growth and self serve. And there was something very kind of obvious about the deal. I mean, it's one of those things where as we got closer to the deal the day before we signed and everything else, it got easier and it got more exciting to look forward to the day that we were closing as opposed to harder.

03:53So I suppose, you know, when you're selling away your life, you might, at the point of about to sign, sit there and go, am I doing the right thing? You know? Is this a disaster? And, actually, genuinely and there's a story to tell you about it, Nathan, but, genuinely, the night that we signed it, we were so happy that we just got to the point where we we know that this is the right thing to do

04:11for us.

04:12And what night was that?

David Karandish

04:13>> You were at a Paul McCartney concert that that night.

Nathan Latka

04:16We told the lawyers on the day it was it was just before Christmas. We told them on the day, we have to close today because we're gonna see Paul McCartney tonight. And no matter how important, you know, the capacity team are and the equipment with team and all the lawyers and how expensive it all is, Paul Paul McCartney is more important. And so we went off to see Paul McCartney in the o two. It was obviously

04:37an amazing gig. And we were on a train on the way back from London to Bedford where I am now, And the whole thing happened over a call, you know, on our train back full of drunk people coming back from London. But it was so it was a fantastic night

04:51for both weeks. December what? December 22, twenty third,

04:54something like that? Eighteenth. Eighteenth.

04:55Yeah. December 18.

04:56And then we've been in we've been in hibernation, Nathan, since then. We've been sort

04:59of reeling from the shock. Yeah. No. It's great. Now before I jump more into the story, the backstory, the negotiations, you know, things to look out for both on on both sides, the acquirer and the one the group being acquired. Bridget, is this are we pretty much on the spot here in terms of revenue growth or any corrections you wanna stick in here?

05:15Yeah. No. No. We hit 1,000,000 sort of much more in the 2016, 2017 mark. So it's a bit it's a bit more sort of it's it's less of a hockey stick and more of a of a of a nice a nice hill.

David Karandish on the 24-Step Customer Experience Framework

Nathan Latka

05:25But about but about 5,000,000 at exit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, David, let me pivot over to you in capacity because you told me in our pre call you have a thesis. You built a list of 24 key items you think every company needs when they think about inbound and customer support. And you said, we're gonna go build or buy in all these spaces. Which of those 24 items led you to searching for booking tools and then

05:48ultimately led you to email Bridget?

David Karandish

05:51>> Yes. So when we think about the 24 steps of the customer experience journey, we can kind of divide them into three buckets. You've got self-service. So that's where a consumer can get help, from an AI agent without having to talk with a person, without having to fill out a contact us form, without having to place a call to a human. That's where we started. That was kind of capacity's bread and butter. It's where we have a

06:13>> lot of, product entry points in that part. What we realized as we got into it though, and that was kind of the original thesis of capacity when we launched back in early twenty seventeen. Big thing though that we realized is that no matter how good your AI system is, you have to be able to handle the questions the AI doesn't know how to answer. So the second big pillar that we focus on is this whole agent

06:35>> assist concept. How do we help support teams do their best work when something does need to escalate up to a person? As we got into it, we started working with a lot of these support teams, particularly marketing and sales support teams. They're like, our biggest workflow is being able to get leads into our business, being able to book appointments, being able to bring people in. And so our third bucket are those kinds of campaigns and workflows.

06:59>> We have other types of campaigns we do, SMS campaigns, voice dialer campaigns. We have multiple types of workflows we support, but scheduling is one of the biggest ones, that we've been handling for years starting internally and then going externally. And so we looked at this and said, wow, if we could find a company that's doing this well at scale, I think there's a great opportunity to combine our self-service AI and our agent assist tools together.

Nathan Latka

07:25Mhmm. Bridget, I'm gonna keep asking David questions while I'm doing that, though. Can you open up your email inbox and search his email and and go when you find it, read to me the subject line of the first email he sent you? Okay.

07:38Nobody's asked me that, Nathan. You ask me so many unexpected questions.

07:41Well, David, you know this. Like, right I mean, someone like Bridget is busy. Right? So, like, you're sending out these emails to potential people to acquire, and you gotta get the response. You've gotta say it in a curious way that gets her to say, okay. I'm interested when she's, like, been all against her of exiting. Right? All against the VC world and just wants to bootstrap. What what was

David Karandish

07:59>> That's true. And well, no. I well, I was gonna say the first time they contacted me, I said no. So there you go.

Nathan Latka

08:03Well, what what was your

David Karandish

08:04>> email subject line was.

Nathan Latka

08:05But, David, what what do have? Okay, David, do you have a process? Did you only reach out to Bridget or did you reach out to 15 companies in the scheduling space?

How Capacity Finds and Approaches Acquisition Targets

David Karandish

08:14>> Yeah, so the first thing we do is we use competitive research tools. I know a great one that has a lot of great stats around SaaS companies that you might be familiar with. So we use tools like Gitlotka to go look at who Oh, nice. You know what? I gotta give the plug. Right?

Nathan Latka

08:31No. I appreciate that. Thank you.

David Karandish

08:33>> To go look and see where where people are at. And, you know what, every data point isn't always a 100% accurate, but it's directionally correct. And enough for us to know, are we going to talk with someone who's at, 50 ks of ARR, someone who's at 50,000,000 of ARR, probably outside the range in either side of what we can go do. Let me make our list. And then I I will go through and look at each

08:55>> individual website to see if there's anything amiss. And just just to make sure it looks like there's a heartbeat and a pulse there. Then we have a process where we send out a bunch of different types of reach outs, some by LinkedIn, some by email, occasionally we'll also do some calls. And the idea is it's like, hey, here's what we're doing. Founder led company sold my last company for north of 900,000,000. We're in this AI powered

09:24>> support automation space. Would love to talk and see if there's any ways we can work together. And sometimes it might come out of that and it's like, not a good fit. Or sometimes it come out, I would love to acquire them, price isn't right. Sometimes we come out of a conversation, it's like, there could be a partnership there. And then every once in a while, we come out of a conversation like that, let's go turn over

09:45>> the next cards. Doesn't mean that we're the right fit for them or they're the right fit for us, but there's a there there worth at least exploring and having that conversation.

Nathan Latka

09:54And you've just to give you some credit while Bridget continues digging through her her, I'm sure very busy Gmail or inbox email inbox, I wanna make sure we get your story sort of plotted accurately as well. So based off our research, capacity has acquired, I feel like, six companies, including the the Lumen Box in in 2016. Is that right?

Capacity Revenue Profile and Acquisition Count

David Karandish

10:14>> I think the total number is up to, I think, eight or nine at this point.

Nathan Latka

10:18Eight or nine now. Okay. And do we we generally have your revenue profile accurate? You broke the 5,000,000 mark in 2019 and now we're at about $4,045,000,000, 50,000,000?

David Karandish

10:29>> We're right at about 43,000,000 to end end last year. Correct.

Nathan Latka

10:33Okay. Four okay. Great. Great. And is did I get the 5,000,000 right in 2019, or is that too early?

David Karandish

10:40>> I had to go back and look at it. It sounds directionally correct. Somewhere

Nathan Latka

10:42Okay. And where did you you know, there's a lot of people listening right now that potentially wanna sell to a group like Capacity or wanna bootstrap like Bridge. There's also folks that wanna go start their own version of Capacity, maybe, like, with a search fund. Where did you get the initial capital to get going on this? You you weren't the original founder at answers.com, so I don't know how much you actually made when the company did

Seed Round Origins and Early Capital Strategy

Nathan Latka

11:01the secondary sale for $900,000,000, but where did you get the original capital?

David Karandish

11:06>> Yeah. So I was the original founder of a company called Announce Media. We acquired answers.com. We did a international take private levered transaction for that. We had some private equity sponsors to help us there. So I did well in the answers.com exit. Didn't make as much money as the private equity guys did, but I I did well enough that I could use some of those proceeds toward future endeavors. And so when we started Capacity, our first

11:36>> seed round was basically just insiders, my business partner and I, and then team members early on who wanted to invest.

Nathan Latka

11:42And David, did you sell like most people in the seed round? Mean, you're selling 15% to 20% of the business. Were you in that same range?

David Karandish

11:48>> Yeah. Somewhere in that range.

Nathan Latka

11:50Okay. And was that the 1,600,000 in 2017?

David Karandish

11:55>> That's correct. Yes.

Nathan Latka

11:56Okay.

David Karandish

11:57>> And then the idea was that we didn't wanna go take outside money until we had revenue customers and proven that we should exist. And then when we did that, we were able to have a much more sizable valuation in that next round. And, I wasn't pitching people an idea. I was pitching people a business. And so one thing your listeners who are super on the early stage, of their journey, my considers whatever you can do to

12:24>> raise as least money as possible in order to get to that first dollar of revenue. I highly recommend that because you can keep more control, you can keep more, ownership and you don't have to give up the farm when you're still in the idea phase.

Nathan Latka

12:37Mhmm. What did you pay though for LumenVox? I mean, was that a company you launched from scratch or you purchased? And if you purchased it, what was the total cash you had to pay to get that business under your belt?

Capacity's Pivot Away from Mortgage Concentration

David Karandish

12:46>> Yeah. We we don't disclose the acquisition prices for deals partly because we've got a combination of cash, equity, seller notes, earn outs that we do. So we don't ever disclose what we pay for these things. But at a really high level, you can think of it as up through right around the pandemic time. We were a single channel web only customer support and employee support platform. So if you wanted to go automate support for team members

13:16>> or customers, we could help you with When our biggest market at that time was in the mortgage space. And if you remember, mortgage was white hot, interest rates were free. And then pretty soon after Powell hit the brakes on, on the whole economy. And then we were on calls with clients that were getting fired in the middle of our calls. So we went from being 75% mortgage tech at that time to saying, okay, we're gonna need

13:46>> to diversify the categories we're in. We need to go after because it wasn't our fault. Mortgage was a cyclical market. The second thing though is we need to we need to be able to go after the highest value highest value types of activities as possible which means we either need to get into a more expensive support which led us into voice, or we need to get tied back to revenue, which is why plugging in with bookings

14:15>> and scheduling makes makes a ton of sense. Mhmm. So we went from single channel, web only, largely concentrated in one industry to saying we're gonna go and be diversified across industries, diversified across channels. And that means we're gonna need to support SMS and voice and social, and anywhere where you might get an email or a ticket or call.

Total Funding Raised and Series D Details

Nathan Latka

14:38Mhmm. I wanna go back to Bridget because I'm sure she's found the original conversation. Before I do that, though, David, just to sum up. So we talked about revenue and the number of acquisitions at capacity. You've raised what's the total you raised to date for capacity?

David Karandish

14:49>> It's just under a 100,000,000.

Nathan Latka

14:51Okay. And the last run was, I believe in October for 26,000,000 a series D?

David Karandish

14:56>> Yes. You hesitated there. Extended that a little bit because we had some we raised a little bit more on top of that, but yes.

Nathan Latka

15:04Okay. And most people, once you get past series B, series C, you can get down to the point where you can negotiate, especially with your background in answers and you're only selling, call it maybe four or five, six, 7% of the business. Were you sort of in that range for the series D?

David Karandish

15:18>> So the way that we think about it is we

15:23>> looked at doing our capital raise in a totally different way than most other companies do. So most companies, you start out, maybe you have a seed round, then you go off and you go bring on a VC, then you're maybe trading one VC, early stage VC for a late stage VC. Sometimes you're going into a third, a third VC at that, at that point. And then you end up with this scenario where the founder is diluted.

15:46>> The founder doesn't have board control. And then when they want to sell or buy or raise capital, they get squeezed. I've seen this store. It's like, it's like one of those,

Nathan Latka

15:58Well, David, this is why I'm asking. I can just cut to the real question, which is how much equity of capacity do you still own?

David's Equity Stake and Board Control

David Karandish

16:03>> I own just under a third.

Nathan Latka

16:05Okay. And you still have board control?

David Karandish

16:07>> I own a third of the of the equity, and I have my business partner and I have complete board control.

Nathan Latka

16:12Okay. That's awesome. Great. Okay. Bridget, subject line. What was it?

16:17Just on that last point though, Nathan, I mean and this is kinda counterintuitive to every single corporate lawyer doing D and D. The fact that David and Chris have complete control of capacity was a plus point for me and Keith, not a negative. Because for us, we feel like we're we're whole you know, handing over a founder led company to a founder led company, which is

16:35really important for pushed on this because I'm going, has David actually gone through a series d and still kept more than, like, 10 I mean, most series d founders I interview, they have, like, 5% of the company left, 10% of the company left. So it's great that David and crew have done that. And, obviously, basically, you it's way more aligned with how you think about business building too.

16:51Yeah. That's it. I mean, the lawyer said, are you sure? They have complete control. It's like, well, we have complete control. So, you know, as long as you're comfortable with that. Do you want me to share my screen? Because I found it. It was on LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn Message That Started the Deal

Nathan Latka

17:01As long as David and you are both comfortable, of course. This is awesome.

17:05Right. This is this is it. This is what I got in LinkedIn. This was in March. This was March 2024. I sold my last company for 960,000,000, Nathan, do you have to put that into your book? And started a new one, Capacity to help automate support. We have around 2,000 clients across the globe. Given the overlap with what you're doing, I love to sync up repartnership or m and a opportunity up for a quick call, David.

17:26And then, this is the best example advert for my tool. I just sent him my scheduler. Get him addicted plus one user.

17:37Did he convert

17:38the paid account?

17:40I think I think Marcus

David Karandish

17:42>> capacity people move over to paid accounts pretty quick.

Nathan Latka

17:44Yeah. Marcus upgraded. Okay. So the next the next call I had them with him was was a bit of a support call because, you know, Marcus upgraded. He wanted to ask a few questions. So, yeah, I mean, that was that was it. And that was in March. So there was there was some way to go. And, again, I wanted to emphasize for your audience that, you know, we weren't running a big process. We weren't sort of

18:02trying to kind of get out at any cost. We we we sold because it was the right thing to because that approach, it didn't we didn't sell in March, but it it started a relationship and a conversation that then led to another couple conversations in September, October that led to, you know, Paul McCartney Paul McCartney Day.

18:22Yes. You you you tech I went back and looked through our text, Bridget, and this is why I love doing what I do at Founder Path. Right? We're helping founders keep equity as they grow and hopefully make more when they exit. We did not have the privilege of backing Bridget, and you can book me with debt because she just didn't need it, and they were very happy, and it is what that is. But you did text

18:38me October 7. You said, quote, I have an acquisition offer I'd love to chat with you through to get your advice. If you're in London, we could do face to face. And so, David, she was very good about holding back all the names and the details, but I do remember, Bridget, we had a really good brainstorm, and you were asking really good questions. I could tell you were seriously considering it because of the quality of questions

18:55you were asking. When did, though, push come to shove? Right? When did the no. David, to your point, there's the total deal price, and then there's the structure, and these are very different. Right? The total deal price could be 60 I'm making this up $50,000,000, but the structure could be 10,000,000 cash, 10,000,000 stock, 10,000,000 earn out, sellers notes, etcetera. When did the total just deal price, not the flavor of the deal, but the deal price, when

19:20did that really come out?

David Karandish

19:22>> Yeah. I think the first thing that we did was just focus on, is this the right fit? And I I don't I don't wanna, like, jump past that because I'm a like both at individual level and at the company level. I've worked with brilliant like just a quick story. Worked with a brilliant product person at one point and he came from a larger organization and was an awesome fit for a large organization, but couldn't multitask at

19:53>> a small scrappy startup. So wasn't, was a bad person or I was a bad boss. It just wasn't the right fit. And so when we, when we try to look at which companies we can go partner with, we need the people. And so part of it is like, we got to find people where, where there's a good mutual fit. If, if the company we're trying to acquire doesn't view us as being the right fit, there's no

20:14>> way it's culturally going to work.

Nathan Latka

20:16And Bridget, how many people are you full time?

20:19We're about 22 people full time. And we have, we actually have an overall headcount of around 35 people if you include all of our contractors and things.

20:26Okay. So David, back to the people side. Yeah.

David Karandish

20:28>> After you've determined, Hey, I think there's a good cultural fit here. I think we can work together. Then it's like, well, what are the, what are the, hot button items? We have some companies we've acquired where they had existing debt we had to go take on.

Nathan Latka

20:41Have some Wait. Let's we have a real example here. Let's try to use real wait. And what Bridget, what were the hot button items in this deal?

20:47So for us, the it was so if you'd asked me a couple of years ago, Nathan, if you and I had been talking about about us being acquired, I would have told you a 100% that I would have wanted to sell and walk away. I would have wanted a 100% cash on close, and I'm I'm, you know, I'm riding off into the sunset. Because I believe that that that that was the only way that made sense

21:09for us to I'm either running my company or I'm not, but I'm not gonna go in for some sort of hybrid deal. Now as we got to know David's offer and the you know, he's obviously got a team as well that was working with us, and it it did evolve. We did go back and forth. There were certain things about, you know, exactly, you know, how much equity, how much cash, all the rest of it. But

21:28at the end of the day, what I actually felt quite comfortable was was the fact that we're not riding off into the sunset. We're becoming investors in capacity. So it was really important to us that we like the team, that we like the founder, that we like, you know, as I said, I'm in I'm in favor of founder led companies. I'm in favor of founders having a 100% control. And for me, the hot button topic was

21:48I didn't want to feel like we were selling you can book me, and we were I don't know. That we were slinking away. Like, actually, this idea that, like, oh, I don't I don't wanna do that anymore. I'm off. I actually wanted I started to strongly feel that we needed continuity. I needed the story of you can book me in the company and the product and everything we've worked towards. There needed to be some continuity there

Deal Structure: 50-50 Cash and Equity Split

Nathan Latka

22:11that I could be a part of that I liked. So, essentially, it was almost like and we did feel a little bit like this on the day that the day after close. All of us have felt like we've applied for a job to work for capacity. You know, we're all we we've all started to work for capacity now, and that needed to be as good and as important for me and Keith as anybody else. So I

22:29did so the alternatives for us would have been private equity. You know, all of these huge vehicles that come along and try to scoop up loads of SaaS companies at about our kind of level. And we all know their names. You know, they're absolutely massive. And for me, I think I'd always have felt like even if they'd given me double if even if I'd got double double the amount, I'd all I would always have felt like

22:50I was walking away from something that I helped create that I think I'm very proud of. This way and so I I never did it. We got offers. In fact, got offers over the last couple of years, we've had quite a few offers, but I never wanted to do it because I didn't want that feeling. And I think that the the point that I realized we could sell was actually was when we went to St. Louis

23:10in Missouri where capacity is based, me and Keith flew out. So to try to reduce the amount of time for DD, we did a face to face, which I'd never done before, but I 100% recommend it. So me and Keith went to St. Louis. And on the first day we were there, obviously, everybody's a little bit trepidatious. I do my presentation. We meet David. We meet the team. They do their presentations. And everybody was so enthusiastic,

23:34and there was so much energy. And we just wanted to crack on with scheduling and customers and support and what we're doing. Me and Keith went back to the hotel that night, we stared at each other. We're like we just basically said this is on. This is on. You know? They they wanna sell to us. They wanna buy to they wanna buy us, and we wanna sell to them. And I think there is it's an

23:52important thing.

23:54Was in when was that, David?

David Karandish

23:55>> That was in, October end of October?

23:58>> That was how old?

Nathan Latka

23:59Because I Halloween.

24:00It was Halloween.

David Karandish

24:01>> Costumes the next day.

Nathan Latka

24:02It was Halloween. It was Keith's birthday. Yeah.

David Karandish

24:04>> Our UK friends with

Nathan Latka

24:06with Howard. David dressed up as a sheriff on the day. But it was Halloween. And and so that was what really clicked, that emotional feeling of, like, yeah, we can do this. This feels safe to do this. We like these people. We like this team. We like what we like the joint plan. We like the vision. And what I've said to the team, it's like as we're the space shuttle docking on the International Space Station. You

Closing Reflections and Audience Takeaways

Nathan Latka

24:27know, the mission stays the same. We're still doing the same stuff, but we're basically joining a a a much larger, bigger operation so we can keep going with it. Mhmm.

24:37Now put a put a cherry straw on top of this cake here. Share what you're comfortable sharing. My audience obviously loves numbers. Maybe I won't push you on a cash number, but, David, can you at least maybe share a revenue multiple you guys ended up trading at and getting the deal done at?

David Karandish

24:50>> I would say we got to a number that was

24:54>> great for Bridget, great for us. We both feel good about it in both ways. Because you gotta remember, anytime we it was a mix of cash and equity, but anytime

Nathan Latka

25:02we If you're not gonna give me the top line, like, multiple because my my audience will kill me if I don't get something from you, can I you at least show the percentages of how it was split? So for example, 10% cash, 30% equity, you know, whatever whatever that and then they can't do the math because we don't know what the total multiple is anyway.

David Karandish

25:18>> Yeah. I mean, it's was it like a third

Nathan Latka

25:21in Orgin, are you comfortable with this?

25:23I don't mind. The these but these are David's numbers. If I know the number, David, you want me to I know the split. So it's fifty fifty, 50 cash, 50 equity. And that's what we were happy with.

25:32We we were happy with And did you start there with that initial offer, or did did you have to work to get to that?

25:37We we negotiated. There was quite a few different terms that we negotiated, but I wanna say this is really important is that we were able to take a really generous amount of equity that we're really super happy with. A, because it feels like we're we're fully invested the success of You Can Book Me Inside capacity, but also because we're bootstrapped. So for me and Keith, as founders, we could take a, a hybrid offer much more easily

26:01than so many people who, as David says, take on far too much complicated cap table nonsense at the very beginning. And I highly recommend it because as founders, as bootstrap founders, we were able to do a deal that exactly when we got our number, Nathan, we got exactly what we wanted. We're really happy. But at the same time, we've actually now got this new relationship with Capacity and David, which makes it even better than what we

26:23were doing before.

David Karandish

26:24>> Yeah. The the last thing I just kinda leave us with, because I know we're hitting time, is, Nathan, from our perspective, whenever we work with a company like You CanBookMe, What if the company isn't convinced that capacities equity is going to be worth X plus Y in the future, then we're probably not the right fit. We want everybody incentivized to be able to say, Hey, look, we want to build something together. And that means, yeah, you

26:49>> should get compensated for what you built and have a good outcome. But we really like aligning the incentives where we're building something together. And the combination of these companies is much bigger and brighter than either one of them stand alone.

Nathan Latka

27:04Yep. Well, guys, I wanna be respectful of everybody's time for the sake of my audience just to run down the story. We don't know what the total sort of top line multiple was, but let's say it was something very conservative, like two x on 5,000,000. That'd be a 10,000,000 deal price. And if it was 50% cash, that's 5,000,000 cash to a bootstrapper. Right? A bootstrapper team and bridge it. Right? And then 50% equity can go for

27:24the ride after that. That's really what you wanna build. Right? You look how happy she is. She has full control. She had no board. She had to convince it was her and Keith in Halloween costumes presenting in Saint Louis, Missouri to get the deal done before or after a Paul McCartney concert. David, Bridget, thank you so much for the details. Thanks for taking us to the top, and congratulations.

David Karandish

27:41>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

27:42Very much, Nathan. Thank you. Yeah.

27:44Alright. Boom. We will cut. Guys, what'd you think?

27:47Yeah. Great. It's good? You are good, Nathan. So tell us what you so so I know you've gotta

27:52jump